Mobile application indexing: what is it?

Why Android Application Development Should Use Mobile Application Indexing

University Apartments is one of your oldest clients. You’ve created a great website and mobile app for them, but they’re having trouble engaging and retaining users on their app. They get a lot of unique installations from their mobile app, but have trouble re-engaging users. Because their user base only searches for new apartments once a year, many simply forget to have the app installed in the first place.

Does this story remind you of anything? Do you spend a lot of effort to create applications for your customers, but you have trouble getting users to install it and become regular users? Mobile app indexing is a great way to engage new and old users with your app simply when they search Google from their mobile device.

What is App Indexing?

App Indexing is a way for Google to look inside your apps for relevant search results. Take this simple example: the other day my son, who is five, asked me about blue whales. As any good parent, I immediately asked Google, the source of all knowledge for five-year old questions. Here was my search result:

You can see that the first result returned by Google is for a Wikipedia link. This links back to the Wikipedia app on my phone, although you can open it on the website. You can see what happens if I open it in the second image, the Wikipedia application is open at the relevant page on blue whales.

To understand what’s going on, let’s look at another example of my wife’s phone, which is also an Android. Same search for Blue Whale:

What happened to the Wikipedia result? Ok, truth be told, it only fell from one place and is right below Google’s blue whale information. Google has great confidence in Wikipedia for these types of questions, so their ranking in search will not be greatly affected by the indexing of applications. Always a change from result 1 to result 2 has a substantial difference in site visits.

Google now allows indexing of applications, which can have a dramatic effect on searches. As we noted before, a mobilegeddon opportunity, more and more research, even the majority of research in certain markets, takes place on mobile devices. This means that two major benefits occur for applications that correctly format their application for Google indexing.

Two major benefits of App Indexing

Getting new users
To easily see these two benefits, consider an apartment complex in a college town, such as Lafayette, South Africana, headquarters of Purdue University. With each new school year comes thousands of searches for great apartment options. Since most of the users are students, the vast majority will ask Google from their phone. Apartment managers are working hard to get their apartments up on Google searches for “apartments near Purdue”. If you have an indexed mobile app, when your site appears on Google search, this will give the user the option to install the app.

This is a great opportunity to get more users for your app, especially a free app like an apartment list app for apartments around Purdue University in this example.

Keep old users
Getting new users is part of the power of app indexing, but the real benefit comes from increased exposure once an app is installed. Let’s take our example from Purdue University. Last year, a student downloaded your app, but it was a year ago and he or she even forgot it existed. Students have hundreds of apps on their phones, so it’s hard to remember all of them. As this student prepares to move to another apartment for the next school year, he or she is again looking for “Apartments near Purdue”. Now, since your app is indexed and installed on their mobile device, this is the first search result returned. The application, which he or she did not even remember, was on their phone, opens and can be used to find another apartment.

You work so hard for people to download your app – now indexing Google apps makes it easier to keep your user base.

Here’s exactly what Google says:
Application indexing helps you find your application in Google search. Once your app is indexed, mobile users who are looking for content related to your app may see an installation button for your Android app in the search results. This helps you to increase your installation base.

Indexing apps also helps you get your users back. When mobile users with your application installed, search for something relevant to the content of your application, the search results can be linked directly to the relevant content of your application. This keeps your customer base engaged. (Google application indexing information)

Now that you’ve seen the power of application indexing, we’ll soon see how to technically index your application and connect it to your website.

Do you or one of your customers have a mobile application that you want to index? Contact IT Hands and let our team help you.

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